


Home

by stardivarius



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardivarius/pseuds/stardivarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Journeys are always better when you have someone to come home to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

Whenever I think of the future I’m always imagining myself in a huge apartment, definitely not a house with family and a husband. Simply satisfied with the prospect that I will survive high school and university.

Maybe even become something more. 

 

I’m not special. I never have been. But I’ve learnt that I’m exceedingly terrible at pleasing others.  _It’s never enough._  

 

People are always telling me to fix this, or change that, or improve this or practise that, or learn this. There’s always something I haven’t done. There’s always another way to make myself  _better_. Make myself anything but myself and that was probably why I was always unhappy.

 

But however long I practise my music, or perfect my techniques in sport or how I change my appearance, there’s always something else that I can still fix. I can’t quite grasp why I can’t make people be satisfied with what I’ve given.

 

That’s exactly my point, right? To “ _make_ " someone like what you’ve done. To coerce. To impose. To  _force_. 

 

Until you came along. You had no idea what you did to me. And quite frankly, neither did I.  I honestly wondered how we’d ever get along. Myself, an insanely precise perfectionist, and you, hands-down possibly one of the most exasperatingly laid-back people I’d ever met.

 

How could you just accept the imperfection when there are ways to attain said perfection?

 

It intrigued me how you could accept things as they were even though you knew you could change it to make it so that you didn’t fail.

 

Instead you took it in stride. You wore your injuries like they were made to be shown off. You smiled through your obvious disappointment, firmly believing that all you needed was your faith, your friends and soccer.

 

I wondered how much it would take to make you snap. I never followed through with finding out what it was exactly, because making you angry on purpose was dumb. I thought we were so different from one another. You made it seem so easy to forgive and forget. 

 

I wanted for so long to understand how you could do this. This concept of “letting go" never engraved itself in my mind because  _I had to be perfect._  I want so badly for you to tell me how. But my pride always gets in the way, and instead, I find myself competing against you all over again without really meaning to. 

 

Ironically, we met because we were at the same camp that centred on improving ball skills. I was only ever good at running. I can run fast and in turn, score goals easily. But you can handle the ball with such exquisite ease that I couldn’t ever rival you in that department. You made me look so mediocre. 

 

 _So disgustingly average_.                       

 

Your dribbling had my mind turning all over the place. No one had ever gotten past me before – not even Abby – mainly because I was already all over the ball, my long strides effortlessly allowed me to be quicker. _Basic physics_. Let alone shoot a ball through my legs  _and_  behind me twice. No, three times, in the span of half an hour. That confused me.

 

But we get along. We get along amazingly. In fact, you’re probably the only person on the team who can put up with my constant need to be perfect. Not that I’ll ever be, but you let me believe it anyway. You’re exceedingly patient and unconditionally kind. 

 

Everyone else sort of got used to me wanting to train more and that probably annoyed them, but they whinged, nonetheless. You didn’t.

 

When we’re both on the bench and I’m panicking because we haven’t scored yet, you quietly reassure and calm me. Even in your most enthusiastic state, you’re still reasonably collected. When you get excited, everyone immediately goes into overdrive because you’re only ever breathlessly animated for good reason. It’s rare you’re ever like this. You are certain we’re going to win and for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never been wrong.  _Not once_. Not even when the scores were tied up until the last ten minutes. 

 

When I finally asked you about how you could so easily maintain calm even when everything else was absolute chaos. You  _laughed_. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done, you know, I’d let my guard down a little for you and you laughed as if it was nothing. Then proceeded to ask me the same.

 

Then it dawned on me when I realised how remarkably similar we actually were. Where I drank coffee, you had tea. Where you had God, I had my music. What I had in speed, you made up for in breathtaking skill. We both liked our solitude. Even during the first time we shared a room, we had an unsaid agreement not to discuss anything soccer related before the game, or venture any further than asking about soccer, music or surfing. Family being the most taboo of all the topics and was never to be touched. While I liked to perfect, you preferred to create. 

 

I gradually learned about your family, and you mine. Though we never willingly pointedly discuss it, I’d hear a random fact about them every now and then. You have three siblings, two older sisters and one brother. I noted the more we often we talked, the more I would learn.  Your facial expressions, your vocabulary, your body language. I was learning  _you_. Everything and anything about you was worth knowing to me.

 

Since everybody else loved you, why not me too?

 

Every so often you’d come home with a new friend to feed and cuddle. Admittedly, I was a little jealous that they’d also have your attention at first, until you started calling them “our children.”

 

At first it was an Alaskan malamute and a golden retriever puppy you had named after condiments, Pepper and of course, Nutmeg.. Then the fluffiest chow dog I had ever seen in my life that I immediately dubbed, “Cappuccino" because I loved those.

 

During Christmas time though, you’d find a quiet place to sit, prop a bible on your lap, Pepper or Cappuccino in your arms and not speak aloud until at least lunch time. Your love for God and your faith made me wonder if it was worth believing in something else. Something other than the drive I had to get this far.

 

Which is then when I realised that I wanted you to love me too. Believe in me the same way that I always believe in you.

 

So, after two years of me watching you quietly read your bible at this specific time, on Christmas day, I asked you. I asked about your family and why you hardly ever spoke about them.

 

I had broken the agreement. The unspoken one we had unknowingly made the very first time we shared a room. But at that moment, I didn’t care that whatever promise we made was broken. I wanted to know because I cared more about you than I realised.

 

To my surprise, you answered me. 

 

You told me that you lost them. You didn’t need to elaborate to tell me that although you didn’t keep in contact with them, that you still loved them. Or that if you did, they didn’t understand soccer like us. And that was enough for me because I knew exactly what you meant and that intangible thing that held us together didn’t need any explaining.

 

It was odd, yet comforting that I knew what you meant, because to be quite frank, I’m sure you realised we were essentially in the same boat. You and soccer were all I had, and no one else was to ever know this.

 

I’m sure you still feel the same way. 

 

It was when I was rifling through the cupboards making a shopping list that I finally realised something. 

 

_You did love me back._

 

You buy my favourite coffee capsules for my precious expresso machine that cost you an absolute fortune. You claim you’ve developed an “acquired taste for it.” I know you really haven’t, you just want to test the contraption you bought me as a birthday present because you hate coffee just the same.

 

So when you come home from your morning jog do I tell you that I love you. And you smiled at me and told me the same.

 

Our newest addition to our growing zoo, an obese Russian Blue you christened, Gatsby – after my favourite book – meowed loudly at us, as if trying to say,  _"thank God, finally."_

 

Not only have I come to the understanding that you’re skilful with your feet, but with your hands and mouth also. That the tan that you have on your arms and legs evenly extends to your torso and lower back. I’m not sure how you managed to accomplish that, but it must have involved the most minimal amount of clothing and the right exposure of bare skin to the sun. I didn’t want to think about how exactly you had gone about doing that because it was then how I knew how much I missed. Not just because of your exposed, flawless body, but how hot your skin became when we first touched. How the mixed sweat, breaths, tangled limbs and tousled hair became  _us._ Not because our soft kisses turned hot in a matter of seconds – _no_ – it was in the way you looked at me. Although I’d seen that expression in your face, I only just realised that it really meant.

 

I remember hearing the familiar padding of our tortoise, Bryce’s, feet, coming into our room that afternoon.  _Our room._  It felt so wonderfully  _home._

_Our home._

 

So while I still believe that I never pictured my future to end up like this, whatsoever, I’m still glad that it did. I may be living in an apartment with three dogs, one morbidly obese cat, one tortoise and  _one girlfriend_ , I can’t say I’m disappointed. Not only did I somehow manage to survive high-school, get into Berkeley and graduate with a degree in Political Economy, but also end up an Olympian with a girlfriend and a crazy zoo of pets. While I may not ever be perfect, I’m perfect to her and she to me. 

 

 _She’s my home_. 


End file.
